Andy & Ari On3 - Instant Reaction to a WILD Saturday afternoon | UCLA STUNS Penn State | Florida thumps Texas

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

UCLA took a big lead and held on for dear life to stun Penn State 42-37 at the Rose Bowl. The Bruins now have a win, and Penn State has a nearly impossible climb to make the College Football Playoff.(0:00) Intro: UCLA knocks off Penn State(5:23) Modelo(6:08) Continuing UCLA vs Penn State(10:37) Florida thumps Texas In Gainesville, Florida's offense played its best game of the season and the Gators' defense terrorized Arch Manning in a 29-21 win against Texas. Now Steve Sarkisian will face tough questions about his game management and about Manning as the Longhorns face a CFP elimination game against Oklahoma in Dallas.  Our show is presented by BetMGM! If you haven’t signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here’s how it works: 1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB.2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game.3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sureyou use bonus code CFB when you sign up! Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary. See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel.  This show is also sponsored by Modelo! Some things in life are just made for each other. Peanut Butter and jelly. Macaroni andcheese. Modelo and college football. If you’re watching this, it means you live and breathe football. All season long. You know what that makes you? A Full-Time Fan. Which means you deserve a Modelo. Because football wouldn’t be the same without you. Modelo is the official beer sponsor of The College Football Playoff. Join On3 today and get one full year of access to The Athletic included! https://www.on3.com/subscribe/C Subscribe to On3!  ⬇️ youtube.com/on3sports/?sub_confirmati...Welcome to On3 | The best of college football and recruiting https://www.on3.com/ Listen to Andy & Ari On3 on podcast! Spotify 🎧: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AhQ4d2... Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Follow Andy Staples on Twitter:   / andy_staples   Follow Andy Staples on Instagram:   / andy_staples   Follow Ari Wasserman on Twitter: https://x.com/AriWasserman Follow us on Twitter   / on3sports   Follow us on Instagram   / on3   Like/Follow us on Facebook   / on3sports   Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to an instant reaction edition of Andy and Ari on three presented by BetMGM and Ari as we stand in front of work done getting ready for Florida State and Miami to play in Doke Campbell Stadium. We got a lot of talk about. What an afternoon. That's my analysis. All right. Let us start in the Rose Bowl. We have to start in the Rose Bowl because that is the most crazy result. the one nobody expect we didn't even okay we talked about Penn State but we talked about Penn State this week

in terms of okay what happens when they play Ohio State what happens when they play Indiana we never once thought about UCLA beating Penn State never once and by the way it looks from the game and the way the game went Penn State never thought about it either because UCLA jumped all over them I was surprised they were televising it coming into the weekend because I didn't know if, like, abusing people on national television would be a fair thing to do. That's how I was thinking about it. So we talked about this walking in from the parking garage as they were losing the game. Now, Penn State had a chance to win, but that's not what's important.

What's important here? Before we get there, can we talk about that? Penn State has a chance to win. They get the ball back with 12 seconds to go. With 12 seconds to go, Drew Aller throws a swing pass. Now, we don't know what the communication was. We don't know what the play call was. So I'm not going to play that all at the feet of Drew Aller or at Andy Codle, Nicky, the offensive coordinator, or James Franklin head coach.

But somebody, one of those three people made the decision that that was going to be a swing pass. All right. I want to back up for one second because that's the end of the game. I want to go to where we were coming into the game. This entire week, everybody was throwing, you know, eggs at Penn State for being a fraud, for being a team that is just the same as they were last year. They can never win the big game. All the things that you get from Penn State whenever they lose. And I thought that that was premature, Andy.

I'm not going to run away from that. You remember last week in the show, you know, episode. And I want to look that straight in the eye and say, hey, you know, they played a really good Oregon team, a team that we thought had a chance or still has a chance to win the national title. They played them to overtime at home. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It's a new season, new roster. They returned a lot of players from a team that played to the final minute in the, in the college football playoff semi-final last year. And they improved their most obvious roster deficiency at receiver.

I thought, hey, they lost. it sucks that it seems to be part of a trend but moving forward they're still going to be able to you know prove themselves but the one thing that james franklin has never done yeah for all you want to say about how bad he's been against good teams they always beat the teams they're supposed to so till today going on the road and here's the thing you sleepwalk against peru you sleepwalk against maryland yep they slip walk against the team that is literally dead right like this isn't this is i I think the most shocking result of the season. They've already fired their coach.

They fired their offensive coordinator this week. Now, we can talk about that because Tim Skipper, the interim coach, his decision to fire Tino Sonseri, who was the offensive coordinator they brought in from Indiana. He'd been the quarterbacks coach. He was not the play caller in Indiana. They were not pleased with the play calling. They promote Jerry New Heisle, who had been on the staff. J.D. Pekyll Floh, son of Rick Neuheisel.

And I am sure that's part of it. I am sure that Penn State and Jim Knowles and the defense. by Jim Delt's highest paid defense coordinator in the country. Yeah. Not prepared for the young Jerry Neuheisel and what he brought. Now, look, you came into this week, not knowing he'd be the O.C. You learned on Tuesday he was going to be the O.C. So I get it.

But it still doesn't excuse getting dominated on the ground. And like you're also talking about a quarter. You still like I was averaging six yards of carry late in the fourth quarter. Yeah. Nico I amaliava had five touchdowns today. I don't know if you know that. These guys got blown out by New Mexico at home. New Mexico.

They got blown out by New Mexico. They lost the Northwestern. Yeah. We were congratulating Northwestern for getting their only big 10 win last week. Yeah. And we were saying UCLA might be the first team to go, I think like it'd be five or six years since a power four team went with no wins in a power conference schedule. That's where we were with this. So I believe that Penn State was a 28 or 30 point summish.

We didn't even talk about it on the show because this was a joke. So that is such a stark difference from what we're used to from Penn State. state they beat the crap out of the teams that they're supposed to beat and then they lose the big ones to the good teams now we're in a situation where they lost to the team that they needed to beat to prove themselves last week and now they're losing to teams like UCLA that are barely awake they're barely alive yeah um so i wrote a column and you know you were sitting next to me here but like they're not the same old penn state they're worse yeah and like this is like the year like this was the year i was supposed to be judging james franklin on

As we had these off-season discussions, Andy, about his record against AP top teams and all the things. My excuse for him was always, well, they didn't have the players back in the day to beat Ohio State and those teams. So how are you judging them for that? They have the players to do it this year. They came up short last week. They have the players this year, and they just lost to you. I'm saying it again. I know.

They lost to UCLA. Were there more Penn State fans at the Rose Bowl? Because like at the end of the game, they were firing. There was nobody. We are sponsored by Medello, of course. home of the full-time fan. I want to congratulate the full-time fans. I don't know how many of you there were.

How many hundreds of you, maybe you got into the thousands. The UCLA fans who were there at the end of the game, the UCLA fans who stuck it out the whole time because the Penn State fans all left, I want to congratulate you. So please, all the Medellos to you, because you are the full-time fans.

Like, think about how dedicated a fan you have to be to even show up as a UCLA fan. fan today to the most beautiful stadium in the country no less but right we're on a beautiful day in southern california where team probably you know is is o and four it could go to malibu exactly that's an option for them yes uh so you get you get all the medellas today and congratulations to you for being the most dedicated people in america today andy they were chanting fire james franklin the penn state fans were and i saw um some news outlets reporting james franklin's buyout so were we one of those uh we not i didn't

We probably were one of those. We tend to do that. But $51 million. Okay, they're not paying that. Is what it is. I went and looked. They offered him a 10-year, like almost $100 million guaranteed contract in 2021.

But I understand because Penn State fans came into the season, wanting something different. They got something different, just in the opposite way they were hoping. Well, okay, let's talk about the path now, because Penn State has to win out to make the college football playoff. must win every game from here on out, which means they have to beat Ohio State.

They have to beat Indiana. Which I believe are back to back, aren't they? They are back to back. There's a biweek in between maybe, but they play back to back. Yeah. All right, that's not going to happen. Yeah. I'm just like, unless there's a personality transplant.

Again, the swing pass with 12 seconds to go tells us this is what they are. This is what they will always be. It will never be any different. I'm going to take a quick kneel break just to get the flavor of the chat. Okay, all right. Let's just see what we got here. Yeah, all right. are he's checking the chat anthony path are you serious playoffs are you serious playoffs as a duck fan

we love big games dang pen state's going to blow the season i think they already did blow the season gerald jackson fire james franklin boot zilla penn state schedule could be the first 10 and two that isn't good enough to get into the college football play that's not true that would mean that they oh no because they had to beat ohio state in indiana they certainly control their own destiny right yeah but but they're not going to win both those games so like it is just unfathomable to me Like in terms of the way that they were pushed around physically, UCLA came out from the beginning. They punched them in the mouth and they kept punching them in the mouth. And there were certain times in that game where it was like, well, Penn State's just going to win.

When they blocked that punt. Oh, when they blocked the punt, I was sure they were coming back. And he leaned over to me and said, what was a spread? They still might cover the spread. And I'm like, it was 30, but probably not. But he goes, okay. But like, yeah, no, I didn't realize or think that Penn State was going to lose that game until they went up by two scores in the middle of the fourth quarter. UCLA ended up averaging 5.1 yards of carry, but only because they were trying.

to salt the game away at the end. Do you have the box score up? I am looking at it right now. What do you know? What do you want to know? Penn State receivers and who their leading receiver was. Was it Kyron Hudson? It was. It was. Kyrin Hudson with four catches for 52 yards. Yeah. But at least he's a receiver. That's true. That's improvement. I mean, Luke Reynolds had four for 46. So it almost was a tight end.

It really bugs me more than anything is you can pile on Drew Aller. You can pile on the receivers. But like with that running back, duo in that offensive line, it's been able to run the ball down their throat for four quarters and win easily. Well, I just don't understand. One team was running. the ball down somebody's throat. It was not the one we expected. So look, if Penn State's going to play like that, they are going to lose to Indiana, they're going to lose to Ohio State, and

it's not going to matter. And this is, at least you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to go into January thinking, what, when is my heart going to break? I don't know. Does that help? I don't think that helps. I think I would rather have my heart broken in January and enjoy the ride of the season. I'm sure. But, you know, this is a, just

an unprecedented level of heat that James Franklin's got out. Oh, yeah. There's no, because there's no excuse you can make for this. You lost to a team that was pointed toward Owen 12. So this is the first time since 1985 that an 0 and 4 team beat a top 10 team. O and 4 or worse, be to top to 25. Yeah, U-TEP beat BYU in 1985. I'm going to write that down and go add that into the story. I think that I want to take one minute, if you don't mind. Absolutely. Nico I amaliava. You have taken an unprecedented amount of crap.

yeah since you left true the man just deserves to have one good night right like i mean oh he's having it yeah yeah this is it he's having it this is i mean he played amazing and maybe maybe maybe maybe you know skipper new heisel is the is the new campaign like maybe those those are the guys maybe they wanted to take it oh like they cared well tim skipper's always been a guy who can get people to play like they care so and and jerry new heisel we hadn't seen it yet but we've seen it now i can't wait to see what's next. Yeah, unbelievable. Unbelievable result. And I cannot believe we're standing in front of work done talking about Penn State losing the UCLA, but that's what makes the sport special,

right? That's exactly right. All right. Also, if you want to give us crap about being wrong about Penn State, go for it. I don't even, I don't care. Like, whatever. Like, all right. A little barbecue over there. Let us move two hours south of here to Gainesville. Florida beats Texas 29 to 21. DJ Lagway has his best game of the season. Everything thing we said about DJ Lagway over the summer turned out to be correct. I said it with conviction, right? Do you think anybody actually believes that? Yeah, we weren't wrong.

What are you talking about? Do you see that? They beat Texas. Yeah, we weren't wrong. Never mind the other guy that we hyped up all summer. He was there today, too. I'll say this, and it's probably easy to say now than it would have been coming into the weekend. But, like, I'm more concerned about arcs than I ever was with DJ.

Oh, yeah. It's funny when DJ gets Dallas Wilson in the lineup, DJ looks amazing. amazing what happens when you throw a five-star wide receiver alien in there to, like, just go up and grab balls from out of the sky. Also, Florida's defense played great. Let's be honest. Florida's defense began all season. My concern going into this game was that Florida's defense had sustained a couple key injuries. You saw Aaron Gates had to have surgery this week, one of the safeties. And I thought, uh-oh, this is a group that has been holding everything together for them. I mean, the offense hadn't shown up. The defense was holding it all together for them. And I was wondering if they could against Texas. Not only did they hold it to. together. The offense showed up too, and this is a huge win. I don't, look, everybody's going to ask, what does this mean for Billy Napier? It doesn't mean anything if he doesn't stack a bunch of these on top of each other. Wait, what are Florida, what are Florida's losses? It's your USF, LSU, LSU, Miami. So they're not bad losses, but they're three losses. I know, but I'm just thinking

about it. Only one loss on the SEC. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So what if they're back? They're back. They also play. They're at Texas A&Mare's back. They're at Texas saying him next week. Yeah, well, that might be a tough. So let's not get too excited yet, but, but that is what the offense was supposed to look like all seasons. So perhaps that is it. That is not what the Texas offense was supposed to look like. It's so bad that when Archmanning got his helmet ripped off at the end of the game and his backup Caldwell had to come in and throw a pass and he threw a seed, we were all sitting there going, just leave the backup in. Just leave them in, yeah. So Archmanning looked off. There's no

question no no no off is not the word bad bad's the word he looked bad their offensive lines stinks it wasn't great i mean like honestly like i'm not i'm not trying to i'm not trying to arch has somebody in his face all the time this is this is actually similar to what we're talking about about dillon raola after the nebraska michigan game where every time because arch missed a few open receivers down the field and when he finally hit one or he goes how come he can't do that all the time I said, because he's got a 300-pound guy in his face every play. I just like the shot down. I mean, like they do have guys, you know, but this was a,

I feel like you can make fun of us for all you want about the Florida offseason stuff. Like if we're wrong about Florida, like that's it. Like the fact that I am this wrong. We were all wrong about Texas. They were preseason number one. Like, like, hyping up Florida, you had to go on on a limb to do. Yeah. That wasn't like a, this is like betting a major favorite and just like,

not even being close it was like betting penn state money line today yeah so um you know i i just uh i'm kind of dumbfounded by what's wrong i mean texas defense isn't very good either i mean like i don't no like no florida was running right through them jaden baw everybody knew jaden ball was this good i think you saw the miami game you saw that jaden ball was this good if last year you saw that jaden ball was this good but they really leaned on jaden bha and guess what when you do that the defense has to play you honestly in the passing game too because you've got to load the box because jaden ball is a 230 pound wrecking ball i love jaden ball and we were joking in the first he had nine carries i think on the first drive and they went down the field and i was like is this guy going to carry it

60 times a night i mean he could he should uh and then uh dj played his best game of the year so um you know and obviously speaking with a florida's office it's so reliant by the way great job because when Jacoby Jackson was ruled out this week, my thought was, okay, they're going to run, they're going to have to run Jadenball on the ground. There's no other way, but they got nine carries for 38 yards out of Duke Clark, too. Well, Florida's entire offense is predicated on running the ball efficiently and then getting off play action, right? Yeah. And like the fact that they were able to move the ball so efficiently on the ground made things a little bit easier. And I know that we were talking about DJ Lagway being the best quarterback in the country coming into the

year. And maybe that was obviously an oversight, but making it easier on your young quarterback probably helps a little bit too. You know, it wasn't easy for him. And it looked like in the second quarter he got injured. Remember when he was limping? And it was like, oh, boy, here we go again. But he stuck in there. And he played a really good game. And throwing it 50, 50 balls up to Dallas Wilson and adding those to your stats to a lot to change the perception of a young quarterback. So like, I'm not fully back in on Florida and DJ Lagway and all the things that we were saying before. But hell, if that wasn't an impressive win. It was impressive. And so I say enjoy this one. Don't worry about, you don't have to worry about Billy Napier at all for another week.

let's see what they do against Texas A&M and then we can talk about all that stuff because the thing about Florida situation is there are so many more games against so many more good teams that this will all that part of it those questions will all sort themselves out so for Florida fans just enjoy the win this is what you were waiting for this is the kind of win you were hoping for this is the kind of game you thought you were going to see from your team all season just thinks that it happens after they've lost three times well if you wanted that at the beginning but enjoy it now because it may be you may not get it again so enjoy it now yeah yeah in Texas yeah we'll

talk about you a lot this week well let's talk about Texas now because here's what they've got to do they now have two losses there there's a path for them to be a three loss team that makes the playoff but that's as an SEC champion yeah they probably have to make the SEC championship game to make the playoff which i'm just going to say it in which may require them to run run the table. They don't look as good as Oklahoma does, period. They don't. I think they might lose next week. But Oklahoma is starting a backup quarterback against my question is this, as bad

as Arch looked, and as good as Florida's defense played. So Oklahoma is probably even better at harassing the passer than Florida. Oklahoma's defense is better than Florida's, period, right? I don't know about period, but I do think they are better at getting after the quarterback than Florida, and Florida had no problem

getting Arch Manning Day. Yeah. And no problem, you know, getting him off time, you know, off the clock. Like, this is going to be really bad. If he plays the way he did against Florida, Oklahoma will eat him alive. Yeah, yeah, no question. It's a really rough look.

And, you know, Texas is a two-lossed team halfway through the season, as was my national championship. So you've got to be, the thing about this, Texas has to beat Oklahoma. They have to beat Florida. Excuse me, they have to beat Texas A&M. They have to beat Vanderbilt. Like, are they going to be able to beat all three of those teams? Yeah, and I also don't know what that means if they make it to

the SEC championship and I have to play an Alabama or a Georgia or something. You know, if your third losses in the SEC championship, you might still get in because you'll have quality wins at that point, but, um, they could be in the, the situation, the situation, the situation, was in playing them last year. Yeah. You know, and I know that we have to do this because playoff like is ultimately what people are driven by, but Texas looks so far away from. Yeah. I mean, if arch plays the way he did today, that conversation will not matter. It will be completely irrelevant because they won't be in the midst. I think that we could have a arch conversation like obviously that's not what we were thinking but texas is systematically

bad at a lot of other areas like their defense should have been able to play i thought they were going to have one of the best defenses in college football yeah they were getting pushed around they got pushed around today both on the offensive line and the defensive line so it was not a good showing and not a team that i anticipate uh at the moment will be a a playoff team but you know how weird the sport is what's right we're going to be in dallas next week and i don't know that we're going to get the same version of Texas. And it will be Oklahoma playing with a backup quarterback. I have no idea what's going to happen. And that's the best part of all this, because even though things seem exceedingly dark for Texas, just like they seemed exceedingly dark for Florida the last time

they played, the next game might all turn around. We'll talk to you soon.